How Do Any of Us Make It Through the Rest of the Election?

Making your way through this cruel, confounding, ever-changing world is difficult. Potential for pain, embarrassment, and heartbreak lurks around every corner. It's hard to do it on your own, and sometimes you need a fresh perspective. Got a question about relationships, sex, family, culture, fashion, really anything other than math? Lay it on me at askdaveholmes@gmail.com. I'm here to help you minimize the damage you will necessarily inflict on the world just by being alive.

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So, what's your problem?

Dear Dave,

Like most of us, I was pretty disgusted by what Donald Trump and Billy Bush were talking about on that bus. But I actually have heard men say things like that about women when women weren't around. If it happens again, how should I react?

Listen: Yes, people do sometimes sound like The Howard Stern Show when they feel they are in friendly company. Yes, 8 million women bought copies of Fifty Shades of Grey. Yes, some of our hip-hop music contains explicit lyrics. (As does much of our rock music; how strange that the Trump apologists on cable don't reference rock artists.) Yes, if you've spent time with me while I have been drinking, you probably know a few specific things I would like to do to Russell Tovey if I had the chance.

It is fun to talk dirty.

But it is not dirty talk that we heard inside that doomed Access Hollywood bus on the set of Days of Our Lives. What we heard on that bus was two pampered men—men who were born on third base, and not only thought that they hit a triple, but that baseball was a game with three bases—talking about putting their permanent upper hand on a woman's genitals, whether she likes it or not.

That is a very different kind of talk, and we are right to be alarmed by it.

It is a kind of talk—men in locker rooms talking about forcing themselves on women—that I too have heard. I have heard it exactly once.

I was the one who said it.

It was right around this time of year: early October, 1983. I was 12 years old and had just started seventh grade at a private all-boys Catholic school. We had just finished PE and were showering in that terrifying group shower in preparation for our late-afternoon classes. As it often did back then, conversation turned to Christie Brinkley (the Emily Ratajkowski of the time, ask your parents) and her performance in the just-released music video for Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl," which we had all just seen on NBC's Friday Night Videos. It was decided among this terrified gaggle of naked boys that she was a fox.

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I was, like many of us at this stage of life, madly self-conscious. I was beginning to sense that I was different, but puberty had not yet nudged its way in and showed me exactly how. In the moment, I sensed a branding opportunity for myself: Maybe if I stepped the conversation up a notch, I'd be thought of as a real ladies' man. A playboy. The class rake.

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So I went for it.

I remember, more vividly than is comfortable, hearing myself say the following words: "If Christie Brinkley walked in here right now, I would lay…her…so…fast."

There was a moment of silence, because it was a ludicrous thing to say, even by the standards of 12-year-old boys who are forced to change clothes around each other, and probably also because my delivery was not super convincing.

And then a sensible, usually-silent boy named Mike, whose locker was right next to mine, served me up some truth: "No, Holmes. No, you wouldn't. If Christie Brinkley walked in here right now, you would be terrified of her. So would I." And then he gestured out toward the assembled boys, and concluded, "We all would."

I sighed, both in the knowledge that Mike was absolutely right, and also with relief in the certainty that everyone would call him a faggot that day instead of me, which of course is exactly what happened. Junior high is a constant hail of bullets to dodge.

So, as someone who has personally and unsuccessfully engaged in these locker room hijinks, I can say with authority: That is not "bad-boy talk," as Michele Bachmann suggests. That is not the behavior of an "alpha personality," as Eric Trump is trying to convince you. It does not come from a place of strength or dominance.

It is a pure and direct expression of deep insecurity.

Men who talk like this are weak.

So that's what you should tell these men. Instead of telling them that they're being disrespectful and inappropriate (and risk them walking away feeling like hero soldiers in the war on political correctness), you should exploit their fractured self-image and desperation to be seen as masculine. You should tell them the one thing they cannot bear to hear.

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You should tell them they sound exactly like a terrified, closeted 12-year-old gay boy.

You should tell them they sound exactly like a terrified, closeted 12-year-old gay boy.

Dear Dave,

The holiday season is coming, and after this election season (which for all we know might still be going on by then), I don't know if I can face it. My parents and one of my siblings are way more conservative than my older brother and I are, it seems like they're getting more so every time I talk to them, and I honestly don't know how we're going to get through a meal without someone getting a plate to the face. Any tips for getting through it?

-Andrew K., Kansas City, MO

Oh, man. I am just back from the state of Missouri my own self, and I danced so skillfully around any possibility of political argument that I got an eight from Len Goodman.

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This is a tough year. We're all pretty dug in, aren't we? We're getting our own news from our own sources who have our own biases. We're more able than ever to hear only the things we already agree with, and to dismiss the things we don't. We are quicker than ever to call the people whose opinions do not match ours crazy or hateful or stupid. We're all guilty of this, and we have been for years. We have each hidden in our own little echo chamber, whether it looked like an Ann Coulter book or a Lawrence O'Donnell rant. Donald Trump isn't just the product of Fox News and right-wing talk radio, he's what happens when progressives and conservatives stop engaging each other like adults. Donald Trump is the dish we ordered, and we cannot send it back to the kitchen.

What we can do is this: When this election is over (if it ever is), we can all go back home and go the fuck outside. We can turn our televisions off, silence our smartphones, and show our families and ourselves some mercy. We can apologize for our roles in the mess we created, even if we don't think we should have to. And if they don't apologize back, we can do the thing where we're like: "Do you have anything you'd like to say?" That shit works sometimes. (Don't get angry if it doesn't.)

We can actively start looking for the common humanity we've lost. We have to. And our families are the best place to start.

I say carve out one full day to make a family activity out of volunteering. Specifically, I recommend lending a hand to some people who don't have the support system you're all taking for granted. Sling some scrambled eggs at a homeless shelter. Keep some lonely people company at a home for the elderly. Go to the LGBT youth center in your city and play checkers with some kids whose parents threw them out. The less fortunate get some help and fellowship, and your family learns how to appreciate each other again—everybody wins. Make it a new family tradition.

We have all, in some way or another, put ourselves on the road we're taking. There's a brick wall at the end of it. Let's get through this election, and then let's lean into a turn.

All of us.

We can actively start looking for the common humanity we've lost. We have to. And our families are the best place to start.

Dear Dave,

Pumpkin-spice flavored food and drink: yea or nay?

-Elizabeth G., Newark, NJ

Strong nay, except for two items: actual pumpkin pie on actual Thanksgiving, and those limited-edition Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts. Everything else tastes like nutmeg and science, and should be avoided.

The actual taste of autumn is a nice, warm, cinnamony bread pudding with a vanilla creme anglaise. Please make a note of it.

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